Welfare and care of places - A training meeting on beauty as a tool for social innovation

BEAUTY AND CARE OF PLACES AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION - YESTERDAY A TRAINING MEETING TO RETHINK THE PLACES OF WELFARE

The beauty and care of places as a tool for social innovation and decisive factor in the design of welfare policies and the design of spaces for people. This was the theme of "Scandalosamente bello", the afternoon of training promoted yesterday afternoon at the Teatro Cavallerizza by the municipal administration, Fcr Farmacie comunali riunite and Fondazione Reggio Children. A multi-voice reflection, addressed to the social and technical operators of the Municipality and its participants, the third sector, associationism and participation, with the aim of strengthening and directing attention to an aspect of care work which is often overlooked but which is an integral part of the educational process. The conference was inspired by Gino Strada’s provocative request to Renzo Piano for the construction of the Emergency Hospital in Uganda: a place "scandalously beautiful", in which beauty becomes the way to put equality into practice and overcome the "better than nothing" logic often found in humanitarian aid.

The afternoon of yesterday is part of a concrete and already started path that will continue in the coming months and that concerns the realization of 15 interventions of accommodation of as many places of service in the next 5 years. With this objective have already been identified three spaces - "Civico 20-Sette" in via Turri, an educational and community space; the "Jerry Masslo" in San Prospero Strinati, a housing service for families in emergency, via Fenulli/ Bergonzi, an after-school and community space - in which a re-design process is underway involving the Municipality, FCR Farmacie Comunali Riunite, Fondazione Reggio Children, ACER, the managers of the various services with their operators and volunteers. The aim is that already this year and for every subsequent year we can identify services on which to work a co-design of places.

"We are convinced - said the Councillor for Care of people Annalisa Rabitti - that "Beauty" must be a right accessible to all people: starting from those who are weaker and more fragile, and at the same time a right of the operators who deal with those people and the beauty of relationships every day. We must overcome false oppositions between what is beautiful and what is useful, recover unity between ethics and aesthetics. Without beauty and care a place struggles to generate virtuous paths: it feeds marginality, sharpens contours and margins.
In a very concrete way we want to work on new consciences, but also act and put them into practice. For this reason, the training of today is accompanied by a plan for the effective arrangement of some places of care in our city. Citizens - volunteers, operators and workers have the right to be an active part of the planning and the right and duty to take care of the places, to take care of the people who live there, to take care of the city and the community. This collaborative process has already started to redesign 3 places every year, to rethink them together with the people who live there and work every day in those places".

"Doing together: I believe that this is the methodological imprint, even if sometimes it is more difficult and challenging - said the city councillor Davide Prandi - I also think it is the most effective way to give answers to the new challenges posed by contemporaneity. We are faced with a great upheaval of the production and management processes that concern the administration and organization of social services, the third sector, associationism and active citizenship: We must be crossed by this crisis to generate new models and new ways, imagining collaborative public services increasingly able to co-design and get contaminated, to rethink our work and project it into the future".

THE INTERVENTIONS - Why is beauty scandalous when compared to social services and services to people? And why apply the category of beauty to places that are often merely functional? What culture of social doing is needed to welcome and use beauty as an educational engine? These questions have tried to answer the different insights that alternated during the meeting, opened by the interventions of the mayor Marco Massari, the councilors of the Care of people Annalisa Rabitti and the City Care Davide Prandi, and the regional councillor for Welfare, Third sector, Policies for children and school Isabella Conti.

To open the interventions was Germana Corradini, leader of the community and sustainable city area of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia with the intervention "Fragile is beautiful", followed by the sociologist and essayist, open innovation manager of the National Consortium CGM Flaviano Zandonai with an in-depth discussion on the theme "New institutions for new canons of beauty, on beauty as a common good and inclusiveness, capable of generating social impact. Laura Credidio, architect, designer of marketing strategies and conscious communication, organizer of TEDxReggioEmilia, has instead declined the beauty as a necessity of social communication, to rethink the latter as an element far from accessory, able to make people feel recognized, to make visible the value of who every day takes care of people.

Daniele Moschetti and Salvatore Illiano of the cooperative La Paranza have then brought their experience to the Rione Sanità in Naples, with the creation of a new model forArtistic that triggered a model of social entrepreneurship and cultural and work change for the neighbourhood’s young people. Valentina Conte, architect, expert of learning spaces, Fondazione Reggio Children, finally spoke about "Spaces that educate: beauty and care in the dialogue between pedagogy and architecture", presenting the approach and the path of the co-educationdesign that provides a phase of listening-dialogue-confrontation in line with the thought of Loris Malaguzzi and the conception of space as "third educator", where the potential of children and people are expressed and that promotes learning and growth relationships.

At the end of the day "l'altrista" (as he likes to call himself) Alessandro Bergonzoni, with the monologue "Capolavorare (ennobilita tutto)".

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